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I first met Denmark’s
last truly Social Democratic Prime Minister, Anker Joergensen, in his
state office, unannounced, in late 1980.

Grethe and I had just
been married. We had met the year before in Los Angeles where I had
been a “participatory journalist”, and activist for
social/racial/gender equality and against the Vietnam War. I wanted
to start a new life with Grethe in her peaceful, social democratic
land.

I took odd jobs and did
free lance writing for some Danish media, and progressive media in
the US and England. As such, I often walked from Grethe’s centrally
located Copenhagen apartment to Christiansborg. The palace is the
only building in the world that houses all government branches. The
royal palace stood beside the seat of economic power, Denmark’s
Stock Exchange (Boersen).

Sometimes I covered
official politics from my “palace playground”, as my new wife
quipped. The six story building is a labyrinth of hard wooden stairs,
long hallways and hundreds of offices. On my second trip inside, I
ambled about unable to find the stairs that led directly to the
balcony reserved for journalists covering the parliament. There were
no guards and no signs on most doors. I stopped before a high door
and turned the bronze polished handle.

A small man sat behind
a large desk. He turned about to look at me, a smile on his face. I
flushed and spurted an apology for disturbing what I realized was the
nation’s political leader.

“That’s quite
alright. No problem,” replied the prime minister unperturbed. His
face wrinkled cozily through a black-white mustache and goatee.
Thinning black hair was brushed back revealing a partially bald
scalp. No guards or assistants appeared as I quietly closed the big
door.

Later in the 1980s, I
spoke a few times with the unassuming man when he was no longer prime
minister yet still the Social Democratic (SD) party leader. We
attended Danish union meetings with delegates from unions in Central
America, men and women under threat by death squads working with the
CIA and US military “advisors” backing murderous dictatorial
regimes.

In 1985, I again met
Anker, as he was known by all, standing beside his old-fashioned,
gearless bicycle in the dead of winter. I asked him, as I had Palme,
if he would be on standby if we had use for his political influence
during the Central American peace-solidarity march. Anker readily
agreed, and he did act when our marcher in El Salvador got arrested.

38 Danes were jailed by Iraq
during the first Gulf War. Anker Joergensen went to Baghdad 1990 and
convinced Saddam Hussein to free 16 of them

Anker started his
working life as a bicycle messenger, then as an unskilled warehouse
worker. He quickly was made a shop steward and worked his way up the
union ladder. In the 1960s, he actively opposed the US war against
Vietnam. Anker participated in Denmark sessions of the Russell-Sartre
Tribunal, in 1968. He was a supporter of the oppressed in many parts
of the world, and of the 1968 Danish student uproar. It was therefore
with sadness for many on the left and the more militant class
conscious workers that he decided to support Denmark’s admission to
the EU, then called the EF, in 1972. Anker often found himself in the
middle of political controversies.

During his two terms as
Prime Minister, 1972-82 (minus 1973-5), he extended the social
welfare system, the last state leader to do so. He got the
pre-retirement benefits law passed, (at 62 years instead of waiting
for old age pension at 67); increased paid vacations to five weeks
for everyone; guaranteed pay raises for public employees; guaranteed
social assistance, and more.

In Anker’s time,
Denmark was known abroad as a tolerant, peaceful, civil
liberties/freedom-loving land. Its foreign policy was based on peace.
Anker supported the so-called “footnote” foreign policy (1982-8)
when Denmark opposed placing NATO nuclear missiles in Europe. The
anti-war movement had already convinced the Establishment not to
allow NATO military exercises and atomic weapons on its territory.
There were several serious confrontations between the US and Denmark
because of this.

"No to Danish war
participation": Anker Jørgensen in front of the US Embassy in
Copenhagen March 15, 2003. Photo Stop Terrorkrigen

Anker died peacefully,
March 20, 2016, at 93. A people’s man, he lived all his adult life,
until he entered a senior’s home, in a moderate apartment in a
working class district of the capital city.

Denmark was a vanguard
country in sexual freedom and gender equality. Brothels were legal as
far back as in the 1870s. For some of 1900s sex for sale was illegal
but allowed. Denmark was the first country in the world to legalize
pornography, July 1969. Freetown Christiania is a major tourist
attraction. It belonged to the military when, on September 4, 1971,
the abandoned military area of 34 hectares was occupied by neighbors
who broke down the fence. They set up living quarters in abandoned
barracks and some built their own housing. Youth House was a legal
underground Copenhagen center for music and free lifestyle, mainly
used by autonomists and leftists for two decades until 2007. Denmark
was also the first country to legalize same-sex sexual activity, in
1933; and legalize homosexual/lesbian/transvestite marriage, on June
15, 2012. Since 1977, the consent age for sex of any kind by any
gender is 15.

Nevertheless, as a
member of NATO and EU, Denmark cooperates with both pro-US
institutions, including in war games. Ironically, it was after the
fall of “communism” and the end of the cold war that Denmark
decided to begin its “activist foreign policy,” based upon
following the US into its wars, including breaking up Yugoslavia, the
last European socialist state, and warring in the Middle East and
Africa.

Left:
the most famous Danish election campaign poster, "Stauning or
chaos-Vote Social Democrats", from 1935. Thorvald Stauning was
the first social democratic Prime Minister of Denmark. He served as
Prime Minister from 1924 to 1926 and again from 1929 until his death
in 1942. Right: a parody from 2007 of the poster: "Thorning and
chaos". Helle Thorning Schmidt was Prime Minister of Denmark
from 2011 to 2015, and the Leader of the Social Democrats from 2005
to 2015.

Denmark losing its peace and social democracy

Denmark’s 5.5 million
residents support a permanent military force of about 20,000.
Although there is a draft, one can choose to perform civil service
instead. No one is forced to go to war unless Denmark is attacked, so
those who war are volunteer mercenaries and earn more money.

The last Social
Democratic Prime Minister, Helle Thorning Schmidt, was the first
woman in the post. During her term, October 2011-June 2015, her
enthusiasm for war included offering Barak Obama her military for
“regime change” in Syria. She seemed disappointed that a war to
remove Bashar al-Assad had been averted when Syria turned over all
its chemical weapons for destruction, “no thanks” to Vladamir
Putin’s input. She declared (September 2, 2014): “Denmark is one
of those countries that deliver most. We are at the level with
Americans, and in that way we also consider Denmark a strong, active
and very solidarity NATO land.”

Obama seemed to echo
Schmidt when he welcomed Denmark’s current liberal Prime Minister
(PM) Lars Loekke Rasmussen, and the other four Nordic land leaders,
to State Dinner, May 13, 2016.

“The world would be
better if more countries were like the Nordic lands.” “We share
common interest and values”. You “punch above [your] weight.”
He underscored Denmark’s recent decision to increase its military
and economic aid to Afghanistan, and expressed thanks for DONG’s
wind energy projects in Massachusetts. Denmark’s public television
correspondent, Stephanie Surrugue, interpreted this praise as an
American receipt for Denmark’s part in the “war against terror”.

The most important
matter discussed that day was US and Nordic governments’ response
to “Russian aggression,” reminiscent of 2014 when Russia
reclaimed Crimea after 97% of voters there so asked. Denmark had
already temporarily sent 6 F-16s and rotating troops to the Baltic
and Poland. When PM Rasmussen returned to Denmark after dinner, he
sent another 150 troops. NATO will now have 6000 permanent troops in
these four countries plus in Rumania and Bulgaria.

In Obama’s dinner
welcome, he extended another hand to Prime Minister Rasmussen, whose
government and ally parties are known for being anti-immigrant. Obama
referred to media critique against the new “Jewelry Law” as
disproportional. The law cuts way back on immigration and
asylum-seekers, even for those fleeing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
where Denmark has long had hostile troops. The government even places
ads around the continent warning refugees not to come.
(www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/denmark-refugees-immigration-law)

The jewelry law allows
police to seize personal belongings worth over $1,450 (jewelry and
cash) from those who apply for asylum, reviving memories of how Jews
were dispossessed of their belongings. One of the positive aspects
Denmark is known for is its rescue of Jews when Hitler gave orders to
eliminate them. Danes quickly took them to Sweden, which was neutral.

A few days after Obama
justified Denmark’s grim treatment of refugees fleeing wars, Syrian
families seeking exile started legal action against a new law that
forbids the joining of family members for three years; it had been
one year. Thousands of exiles are split from their closest ones due
to death pursuits where they come from.

The refugees have a
good chance of winning the court case especially as it was filed the
day after the European Human Rights Court judged Denmark in violation
of human rights regarding a law that discriminates against
immigrants. An immigrant who marries someone living in another land
cannot bring his/her partner to Denmark before they are 24 years old.
This law is connected to another that only allows equality of natives
and immigrants once the immigrant has been a citizen for 26 years.
The main lawmaker considered these laws as making Denmark Europe’s
“pioneer” in “hardening laws” against immigrants-refugees.

The current
Foreign-Integration Minister, Inger Stoejberg, expressed disdain for
the Court’s decision. She said that she would find a way to
maintain and extend tightening immigration-refugee rules. “If we
can’t do it one way, we’ll do it another.”

Protest in Stockholm, May 21,
2016: No to Host Nation Support Agreement

On the occasion of the
White House State dinner, the five Nordic nations signed a “summit
joint statement” with the US reaffirming “our deep partnership on
shared fundamental values” that include strengthening NATO, backing
the Baltic States and Poland with weaponry, aircraft and troops,
pressing Russia on many fronts, “stabilizing” Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria and other areas.

Finland and Sweden also
planned to end their neutrality and join NATO where Denmark, Norway
and Iceland already sit. Sweden signed a Host Country Agreement with
NATO after the dinner giving the war alliance rights to military
troops and exercises on Swedish territory and even the right to war
on Swedish territory “if a crisis” warrants it. Finland signed a
similar agreement. Danish PM Loekke Rasmussen diligently prepared to
please his host.

Since 9/11 all the
Danish governments (so-called blue/conservative and red/liberal block
coalitions) support the many regime shifts outlined by the first
George Bush government, about which I will detail in future pieces.
During the April 2016 Danish parliament debate to invade Syria and
extend Denmark’s military capacity in Iraq, the foreign minister,
Kristian Jensen, made no bones about it: “Our goal is quite
simple. In relationship to Syria our goal is to remove Assad, as one
of the worst dictators in the world at this time.” He also
stated that Denmark will fight the Islamic State.

According to United
Nations law, as well as Denmark’s own constitution, war must not be
waged if: there is no UN mandate, or the country in question is not
attacking the nation. With Syria, no specific plans are stated about
directly attacking government forces. However, the Syrian government
has not asked Denmark or the “coalition of the willing” to aid it
in its defense against IS, and thus another reason the invasion is
illegal.

1. April 19, Denmark’s
parliament voted 90 to 19 to send 460 military instructors and
technicians, including 60 Special Forces soldiers, to Syria and Iraq,
along with seven F-16s, and a C-130J transport aircraft. Why did 40%
of the parliament (70 highly paid members) not vote on the most
important question: whether to kill people and do so against the
laws?

2. May 10, parliament
decided to send16 more soldiers to Afghanistan bringing their numbers
to 100. This came after the US stated it will increase its troops
there by 7-800. It now has about 10,000. The tiny country also did
the US’s bidding against Libya in 2011 with 6 F-16s and 120
soldiers. As the US discusses the possibility of warring there once
again, Denmark is ready.

3. May 12, the day
before the Nordic state and foreign ministers were to eat at Obama’s
table, Denmark’s government decided to buy 27 F-35 jet fighters
before they were built by the world’s largest weapons company,
Lockheed-Martin. The initial cost of 20 billion kroner ($3 billion)
is the largest military expense in Danish history. Danish defense
experts estimate that the real cost will run between three and four
times that with upkeep and 30 years “normal” use.

4. On the same day,
Denmark's energy company DONG stated it plans an initial public
offering (IPO) of at least 15 percent of its shares on the Nasdaq
Copenhagen stock exchange this summer. The estimated value is around
$11 billion. This will be the largest IPO in Danish history.

The state-controlled
utility said the move would reduce the government's stake in the
company from 58.8 percent to 50.1 percent, and the government could
sale more of its share in 2020 and lose control. It was originally
all state owned. In 2014, Goldman Sachs, the world’s most powerful
and infamous investment firm, bought 18 percent of DONG for $1.2
billion. But it wasn’t even the New York GS company, rather a
subsidiary in Luxembourg owned by a shell company tax haven in
Delaware state and Cayman Islands. With its minority ownership,
GS insisted on determining Denmark’s energy company’s leadership.
It then pushed DONG to go IPO, and threatened to shut down renewable
energy sources if the government didn’t increase its subsidies.

Eighty percent of Danes
opposed the sale; 200,000 signed petitions. Nevertheless, the Social
Democrat government refused to explain why it did not sell those
shares to Danish pension fund companies which made offers. SD’s
junior partner Socialist People’s Party (SF) quit the government
over the scandal. The deal was so undemocratic that Goldman Sachs
hired the former prime minister and ex-NATO general secretary, Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, as its PR man in Denmark to smooth over the
controversy.

Just days after the
White House State Dinner, the stock exchange valued DONG to be three
times its underrated value in 2014, from about $5 billion to $13-15
billion. The “incentive plan” for DONG leadership garnered them
$70 million, which raises suspicions that the company’s worth was
deliberately undervalued. And the $1.2-$1.5 billion profit that
Goldman Sachs plucked could have benefited Danish society had the
shares been sold to Danish owned workers pension fund companies. The
Social Democrat government’s finance minister at the time, Bjarne
Corydon, is seen as the bourgeois’s Trojan Horse.

The May 27, 2016
editorial in “Politiken”, a liberal capitalist daily, called the
course of events “ugly”, and has “increased mistrust”, so
much so that a staff writer wrote “this is the stuff that makes
ordinary people turn their back on the powers that be and look
towards Donald Trump”.

While half of DONG’s
electricity and heat generation comes from renewable sources, it also
buys coal mined in Colombia where death squads operate. In December
2015, Danish and international media revealed how DONG and Sweden’s
government-own Vattenfall bought coal from the murderous Prodeco
mining firm owned by Glencore. BBC reported (2012) that Prodeco paid
for the murder of ten residents, in 2002, so it could take their
land.

One-third of Danish
electricity comes from coal—4.5 million tons in 2014—and half of
that comes from Colombia. DONG bought 950,000 tons of coal from
Prodeco, in 2014, and 160,000 tons in 2015, after exposure about its
murders. As of this writing DONG has not severed ties with Prodeco,
and it is hard to find workers who still believe the Social
Democratic party represents workers.

Denmark comes to dinner

Prime Minister Lars
Loekke Rasmussen came gleefully to dinner bearing those many American
gifts, and he thanked his world leader for the “lucrative export
contracts for Danish businesses.” These warring-profiteering
“gifts” offered to the world’s policeman dispute Bernie Sanders
portrayal of Denmark as socialist and humanitarian as he has so often
proclaimed during the election campaign.

Sanders is a social
democrat, who mistakenly yet bravely refers of himself as a
socialist. He thinks well of Scandinavia because, after class
struggle there like in all of Europe, it introduced social benefits:
“providing health care to all people as a right” and “medical
and family paid leave,” as he repeatedly says.

A few days after his
initiated this postulate early in the primary campaign, the Danish
prime minister set Sanders straight.

“I know that some
people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of
socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is
far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market
economy…with a flexible labor market that makes it easy to hire or
fire.”

Cut-Out: during 2014, the
liberal Prime Minister was properly stripped by the media. We help
him to dress again (Allusion to Rasmussen's clothing
expenses).Cartoon by Mirthuel Larsen

* * *

This writing sprang
from discussions I’ve had with several people regarding the
Danish/Scandinavian model of social democracy, or socialism as Bernie
Sanders contends. Some well intentioned persons view the Nordic Model
as a solution to greedy capitalism, while others view its role as a
seditious savior of exploitative capitalism. Many Cubans I knew when
living there (1988-96) and visiting since see the Nordic Model as a
way out for their failing revolution, gone the way of a bureaucratic
state. Some Spaniards backing Podemos hope to emulate Scandinavia,
whose social democracy is also failing, unbeknownst to many foreign
admirers.

Hathaway put it this
way. We are witnessing “the death of social democracy in Europe
coupled with the rise of pseudo-left parties that exist to channel
potentially revolutionary energy into reformist dead-ends…the
crackdown on social democracy is inevitable under capitalism. These
progressive measures were only allowed to stimulate consumption
because the main consumer market then [Europe 1920s-70s and USA in
Keynesian time, 30s-70s] was in the home countries. Now the market is
global, and the corporations have to slash costs to compete with the
emerging capitalist countries, which have lower wages, so social
democracy has to go. But this crackdown may finally make the workers
in the West realize their class position and start fighting back.”

Lindorff put it
another way. “Sanders [social democratic approach] offers a chance,
slim I would agree, to attack the country’s corrupt power
structure, and if that happens, we will inevitably see a weakening of
the imperialist superstructure, and of the military
industrial-complex…Sanders is urging his backers to create a
movement, not for him but for the issues that matter which he is
backing…It is a fantasy to believe that there will be a socialist
revolution in the US that will overthrow the system. Far more likely
is an openly fascist government.”

(Ron Ridenour
has been an activist against war, against racism, and for socialism
for over half a century. He is also the author of six books on Cuba,
(“Backfire: The CIA’s Biggest Burn”) plus "Yankee
Sandinistas", “Sounds of Venezuela”, “Tamil Nation in Sri
Lanka”. He has lived and worked in Latin America for 15 years,
including in Cuba 1988-96 (Cuba's Editorial José Martí and Prensa
Latina), Brazil, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, India. www.ronridenour.com;
email: ronrorama@gmail.com.)

Philosophical
forefathers of a socialistic vision include Buddha and Lao Tzu.
Buddha was an Indian/Nepalese prince; Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher.
Both lived in the 6th century before Jesus Christ’s
birth. Jesus should also be included as a “primitive communist”
as some see the Palestinian Jew, human being or god-human. These
visionaries hoped that peoples could live together in peace and
harmony, one great family sharing resources.

The term socialism took
hold as a political ideal first in France, in the 1820s, when Henri
de Saint-Simon envisioned the ideal society as one large factory. His
followers chose the word socialism to represent a centrally-planned
society run like a cooperative business by worker-owners, and/or in
conjunction with the state. The term communism also comes from
France, probably back to medieval monks who shared property, living
in common and feeling a sense of togetherness. Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels’ theory of communism entailed social organization
based on sharing property, the highest state of socialism in which
all lived well socially in a stateless society.

Socialists disagree on
how to develop socialism and even how to define it exactly. They all
agree, however, that socialism’s economy is not dominated by
private ownership of the means of production. Public ownership—either
by the state or by worker cooperatives, or a combination—is central
to its philosophy. It is also generally agreed that it is just and
necessary to create a permanent state of social welfare with greater
say in political-economic matters by the producers and folk at large.
However, a system in which the people are the determining
decision-makers has not yet been developed, neither in Russia/Soviet
Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Korea or anywhere.

The first social
democratic party arose from union struggles and was founded by
Ferdinand Lassalle, in Germany, in 1863. He was familiar with Marx
and Engels’ writings. The latter founded The First International
(International Workingmen’s Association) in London, the following
year. They sought to unite left-wing socialists, communists,
anarchists and trade unionists around class struggle and the need for
a socialist revolution.

Some social democrats
(S.D.) view social democracy as a “third way” while Marx and
Engels maintain there can only be capitalism or socialism.
There are basically two variants of social democracy in theory. One
advocates evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to
socialism, in contrast to the revolutionary approach associated with
Marxism. The other advocates economic and social state interventions
to promote social justice and welfare within the framework of a
capitalist economy. The latter approach was adapted by the Englishman
John Keynes. President F.D. Roosevelt employed Keynesianism during
the Great Depression aimed at restoring order and saving the
capitalist system. In all social democratic approaches private
property remains in the hands of the owner (ruling) class.

Are you going to vote for the
people's traitors? Finnish Social democratic election ad, 1907

The first social
democratic government in the world occurred in Finland, in 1907,
eight years after the founding of the social democratic party. In
1916, S.D. won an absolute majority and governed alone for the only
time.

German social democrats
achieved their first government in 1918 upon the end of the First
World War. Sweden had its first S.D. government in 1921. The second
oldest social democrat party was led by postal worker Louis Pio in
Denmark, in 1871, inspired by the Paris Commune. The social democrats
formed its first government in 1924, the same year the social
democratic Labour Party was elected to govern in England. Norway’s
S.D. ruled first in 1928 but fell after two weeks. The party split
into two, one fraction created the Communist Party. The S.D. ruled
again in 1935. Iceland’s trade unions formed the social democratic
party in 1916. The tiny nation took its independence from Denmark
once the United States occupied it during the Second World War. The
US took control of Keflavik airfield, and at its height there were
75,000 military personnel there. The social democratic party first
came to rule in 1947-9.

The October Revolution
in Russia (1917) was the key influence for social democratic
development throughout Europe. The Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party (RSDRP) was founded in Minsk, in 1898. Lenin joined it in 1902,
and led the Bolshevik (majority) split at its second congress, in
1903. Bolsheviks became the Communist Party, in 1918. The Mensheviks
(minority) continued as a S.D. party. The two were often at odds yet
sometimes joined forces until the October Revolution.

The Bolsheviks formed a
disciplined vanguard party agitating for a proletarian revolution,
armed if necessary. The Mensheviks sought social democratic
compromises with the “bourgeois democrats”, in which free
expression would prevail as opposed to “democratic centralism”.
When world war broke out Tsar Nicholas insisted on victory over
Germany. He was forced to abdicate in March 1917 and a Provisional
government took over. It, however, continued the war, supported by
social democrats and the Social Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks
advocated an end to the war and a transition to socialism. Their
slogan was: land, peace and bread.

Lenin and Trotsky led
the party to victory in October (November 1917). Their hope that
social democrats would oppose world war had been dashed when German
social democrats supported the bourgeoisie war. A worldwide workers’
revolution was averted when social democrats in country after
country, including in Russia, allied with the capitalist class. This
led to the isolation of Russia.

The Nordic Model grew
out of this Great Compromise between social democratic-led trade
unions and wealthy property owners. In exchange for staving off
socialist revolutions the capitalists granted improvements in working
and living conditions for most workers in Scandinavia, eventually in
Germany, England, Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe.

The Saltsjöbaden Agreement
of 1938 in Sweden, a deal that ensured class peace. Trade union
leader August Lindberg is at the left while corporate chief Sigfrid
Edström is at the right

The Nordic Model
developed through the 1920s to the 1970s to include a large welfare
state emphasizing employer and labor union institutions with
unemployment insurance and pensions; transfers to households and
publicly provided social services with a high rate of investment in
human capital including: child care, tax supported education and
health care, maternity and some paternity leave, paid vacations; and
greater social and gender equality.

These producer-earned
benefits dampened Western working class enthusiasm for international
solidarity, especially with workers in underdeveloped nations whose
work and living conditions neared slavery and even include slavery.
No other nation joined Russia in its socialist experiment until after
World War II.

No matter one’s
analysis or opinions of Communist-led Russia and the expanded Soviet
Union, one must recognize that its development was warped, in part,
by constant subversion directed at it by the United States and many
of its allies. From the beginning of the revolution, the US and
several European allies, plus Australia, Canada, India, even Japan
and China, supported the White Russian and Cossack
counter-revolutionaries who wanted a return of the Tsar. The
“democratic” allies sought to defeat the new Bolshevik army and
to crush communism in the bud.

From May 1918 to July,
100,000 troops were sent to Vladivostok and other areas of northern
Russia. The Japanese had 70,000 in Siberia to solve a “border
problem” between China and Russia. The US sent 13,000 troops. Most
weary allied forces withdrew by 1920 but some Japanese fought on in
Siberia until 1922 and in northern Sakhalin until 1925 when finally
defeated by Russia.

World War II and Marshall Plan

Social democracy had
such an impact on workers in much of Europe that Adolf Hitler and
Benito Mussolini were forced to include many of its benefits for
“authentic” Italians and non-Jew Arian Germans in their
nationalist, racist and warring parties. Hitler even falsely named
his party in that spirit: National Socialist German Worker’s Party.
Its first priority was to draw workers away from communism and into
völkisch (folk) nationalism. While Nazis killed communists,
its political strategy initially focused on anti-business and
anti-capitalist rhetoric, later played down in order to gain support
of industrial property owners.

Italian Fascism
promoted a corporatist economic system whereby employer and employee
syndicates associated to collectively represent the nation's economic
producers and owners, which were to work alongside the state to set
national economic policy, and resolve class conflict.

As World War II
approached, most social democratic parties did not support the peace
policies of the Lenin-wing of the social democratic party (soon to
become the Communist Party), and its associated parties throughout
the world. Nor did social democratic parties in many countries
protest the rise of fascism or even the fascist take-over of their
nations. In Denmark, for instance, the Nazi-collaborationist
government was led by the Social Democratic Party, under the
leadership of its “father” Thorvald Stauning. He was succeeded by
S.D. Wilhelm Buhl. Both turned over Communists and other liberation
fighters to the Nazi party, even more than asked for. The Nazis
imprisoned 6000 civilians, tortured many, and executed 850. Buhl also
encouraged workers to snitch on patriotic saboteurs, and to take jobs
in Germany, thus aiding the Nazi war effort. Nevertheless, upon the
end of the war, Buhl was made provisional prime minister.

Denmark was effectively
liberated on May 5th by British forces led by Field
Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Only four days later the Russian Army
occupied the Danish island of Bornholm after intense fighting with
the Germans. Russians voluntarily left the island a year later.

After the liberation
there was uncertainty about how the allies would regard Denmark,
which had deliberately declined to take up the fight, as opposed to
Norwegians. Eventually Denmark was accepted as an ally, mainly due to
allied appreciation for the widespread Communist-led resistance to
the German occupation during the last years of the war. (1)

Despite the fact that
Russia was the main victor of the war, and suffered the greatest
casualties, and that it was British troops who first entered Denmark,
the social democrats and Danes generally fell in love with the United
States, which has devastating consequences today (more on that
later).

The loss of over 60
million people (some researchers say 80 million) devastated many
countries, especially the Soviet Union. It lost 13.7% of its
population, some 27 million people, about 16 million civilians.
Germany lost between five and eight million people, 7-11% of its
population. Despite torrential bombings, the UK lost only one percent
of its people, around half-a-million. About three percent of China’s
population was killed, between 15 and 20 million people,
three-fourths of them civilians. By contrast, the US lost only 0.32%
of its population, about 420,000, nearly all military. In 1940, there
were 2.3 billion people. The war took three percent of them.

Nevertheless, World War
II was an economic boom for the USA. Its weapons, oil, steel, auto,
and construction industries grew manifold. Their surplus financed the
Marshall Plan to rebuild the capitalist economies of Western Europe
and prevent socialist-communist electoral victories. This policy
succeeded, especially in Greece and Italy where a majority of workers
were leftist.

Europe’s two largest
political parties, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats,
adopted and even extended welfare benefits enabled by the Marshall
Plan. The “free market” has since largely replaced the state as
the politically determining force, and the welfare model is no longer
viewed as necessary. Globalization brings unprecedented profits to
capital, and their friendly governments allow even greater profits by
helping the largest companies and rich individuals to avoid paying
taxes in a myriad of ways: by granting them enormous tax cuts,
ignoring their tax shelters and bogus companies, and by legal or
semi-legal loopholes. Capitalists can also easily avoid paying taxes
and decent wages by packing up businesses in the Western part of the
world and moving them to countries where governments allow slave
wages and unhealthy conditions.

The European Union has
moved towards a United States of Europe in which major monopolies are
assisted in attacking the historic results of workers struggles, and
forging a state of permanent fear of losing jobs and social benefits.
These fears are enhanced by terrorist attacks committed by desperate
and fanatic people whose countries have been invaded and sacked by
NATO/coalition of the willing armies, and the flooding of refugees
fleeing these wars. EU has come to mean the loss of national
sovereignty, un-payable debts, the destruction and privatization of
the public sector—the abandonment of the Nordic Model.

All that moved the
majority of Brits to vote themselves out of the EU. This historic
rejection, on June 23, 2016, opened the way for radical movements
rightist and leftist. I believe that those of us who are fed enough
have a co-responsibility to stop this “inhumanity” human beings
have created or Armageddon will overwhelm us and the planet. That
means, at the least, that the inhuman economic system known as
capitalism, which requires never-ending profit over the needs of
people must be replaced by a humane economic system based on
cooperation and sharing.

Notes:

(1) The social
democratic-led government could have waylaid the Nazi invasion of
Norway, giving Norwegians time to put up greater resistance, had it
sabotaged the airport at Aalborg where the Nazis would launch their
attack. Ironically, it took a right-wing liberal Prime Minister, and
later NATO chief, Anders Fogh Rassmussen, to be the first Danish
leader to officially apologize for Denmark’s collaboration with the
Nazis. As reported by the New York Times, August 30, 2003, he
asserted this was ''morally unjustifiable.'' In a speech for the 60th
anniversary of the end of the 1940-43 collaborationist government,
Rasmussen said, ''If everyone in Europe—if the Americans and the
Russians—had thought the same as the Danish lawmakers, then Hitler
would have won the war.'' Nazi troops invaded on April 9, 1940 and
the government immediately surrendered.

Olof Palme had just won
his fourth term as Prime Minister when we spoke in Stockholm in the
fall of 1985. Like Denmark’s Anker Joergensen, this stalwart social
democrat opposed the “cold, egoistic new liberalism”. Unregulated
capitalism threatens the Swedish model of social welfare, he said at
his September 15 election victory.

Palme was more than a
typical social democrat of his times, more a “revolutionary
reformist”, as he was often called. He was a stronger critic of US
and Israel imperialism than any other Western government leader. His
denunciation of US’s war against Vietnam-Cambodia-Laos—especially
its bombings of Hanoi, which he compared with Franco’s bombing of
Guernica—led the US to deny him entry and it froze relations
between the two governments. Sweden’s parliament was not cowed: 216
of the 350-member body voted to support South Vietnam’s provisional
government’s 7-point peace plan. This plan, including the removal
of all foreign military personnel and war equipment, became reality
upon victory, May 1, 1975.

In 1969, Palme and the
government adopted a neutral stance in the Israel-Palestinian
conflict, but when Israel invaded Lebanon, July 1982, Palme compared
Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children to that of Nazi Germany
treatment of Jewish children in concentration camps and in ghettos.

Not only did Palme
speak out against imperialism but he marched against it, and for
third world liberation. (He also condemned the Soviet intervention in
Hungry and Czechoslovakia.) A Spanish speaker, he felt close to Latin
America. Palme was the first Western government leader to visit Cuba
after its revolutionary victory, and supported the revolutionaries in
Nicaragua. He spoke at their victory rally, in July1979. Palme also
supported Chilean President Salvador Allende and liberally gave
asylum to many Chileans following the coup that overthrew Allende. He
endeavoured to get Chilean political prisoners released from Dictator
Agosto Pinochet’s dungeons.

Nevertheless, during
Palme’s governments (before and after) the military and secret
service co-operate with the Pentagon and the CIA. Sweden is also a
major weapons industry. In 2013, it ranked number 12 in weapons sales
($1.8 billion), and the third largest exporter in per capita figures.
It sells to 55 countries, including to human rights violator Saudi
Arabia.

Palme enthusiastically
accepted my invitation to be on call as a moral supporter for our
solidarity and peace march in Central America. We had use of his
support during our march in El Salvador. It grieved me to hear of his
assassination on February 28, 1986.

I had recently returned
following the end of the six-week peace action, and took a job at a
Copenhagen sewage treatment center. On the day of Palme’s murder,
we workers held a minute of silence. His murder was viewed by many as
a political assassination. Possible culprits ranged from the CIA to
Sweden’s own secret service, SAPO, known for its right-wing
sympathy and CIA ties; to Chilean Dictator Pinochet, South Africa’s
apartheid secret service, or a hateful individual. (1)

Palme murdered

Sweden not only lost a
strong leader for social democracy, which soon went downhill, but the
nation has since leaned closer to US imperialism and today follows
its foreign policy. Carl Bildt was PM from 1991-94, and leader of the
Moderate Party from 1986 to 1999. He was responsible for severe
attacks on the welfare state. With Black Wednesday, September 16,
1992, the British conservative government withdrew the pound sterling
from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Currency market
speculators, namely George Soros, had short sold the Sterling, and
“broke the bank of England”. Sweden’s main bank, Riksbank, then
set its krona currency free. The krona lost 15% to the US dollar.
This took place concurrently with the burst of a housing bubble.
Sweden lost $10 billion more. The crisis plunged Sweden and Finland
into a severe recession. Unemployment rose from 2% to 10% in Sweden
and from 3% to 18% in Finland.

Many economists pointed
to the neo-liberalization of the economy, which the US influenced in
the 1980s, as cause of the crisis. Social Democrats and liberals
alike demanded a freeze and even cutbacks on wages. Scandinavia
reduced the role of the public sector: deregulating financial
markets, leading to a rapid inflow of capital to finance domestic
investments and consumption. Speculation took over the once solid
economy, and currencies were floated, expansion of credits with low
rates of interests, greater capital imports, investing more than
wise. Scandinavia lost satisfaction with being small, rich welfare
states. Sweden joined the EU under a Social Democrat government, in
1995, as did Finland.

Neo-Liberalism serves the richest

Neo-liberalism is also
associated with the financial crisis of 2007-8. Neo-liberalism became
prevalent in the 1970s and 80s. It is a resurgence of 19th century
laissez-faire capitalism, a “free market trade” without borders,
aimed at enhancing the economic and political power of wealthy owners
of property, of trans-national corporations.

Neo-liberalism took
hold in the US with the first oil crisis in October 1973 when OPEC
(Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) proclaimed an oil
embargo. By the end of the embargo, in March 1974,the
price of oil had risen from US$3 per barrel to $12 globally (higher
in the US). The embargo caused a shock with many short- and long-term
effects on global politics and the global economy.It was
followed by the second oil crisis, in 1979.

The embargo was a
response to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt and Syria tried
to retake some of their territory stolen by Israel in 1967. They
launched a surprise military campaign against Israel. The US supplied
Israel with even more arms. In response to this, OAPEC (consisting of
the Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) announced an oil
embargo against the US, UK, Netherlands, Canada and Japan. OPEC has
sought a greater share of the oil pie.

The crisis had a major
impact on international relations and created a rift within NATO, the
last serious one. Some European nations, including Sweden under
Palme, and Japan sought to disassociate themselves from US foreign
policy in the Middle East, in order to avoid being targeted by the
boycott. Arab oil producers linked any future policy changes to an
end of war. President Richard Nixon and US Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger arranged for Israel to pull back from the Sinai Peninsula
and the Golan Heights (temporarily). The promise of a negotiated
settlement between Israel and Syria was enough to convince Arab oil
producers to lift the embargo in March 1974, but not before a stock
market crash, the worst since the Great Depression.

The embargo's success
demonstrated Saudi Arabia’s economic power. It was (is) the largest
oil exporter and a politically and religiously conservative kingdom.
The embargo caused a petrodollar recycling mechanism, requiring a
relaxation of capital controls in oil-importing economies, which
marked exponential growth of Western capital markets. OPEC members
and Russia were earning more money from the export of crude oil than
they could feasibly invest in their own economies. Many believed that
Western oil companies thereby also profiteered from the embargo and
therefore colluded with OPEC. In 1974, seven of the fifteen top
Fortune 500 companies were oil companies.

Milton Friedman was a
major proponent of neo-liberalism (also right-wing economist
Friedrich Hayek and “Atlas Shrugged” author Ayn Rand). A month
before OPEC’s embargo, General Pinochet led a vicious coup,
September 11, 1973, and took over Chile from the democratic
government. Friedman helped him reverse the social democratic
initiatives started by the socialist president Salvador Allende, who
had been elected in 1970. The brutal coup, backed by the
Nixon-Kissinger regime, murdered many thousands, many of them under
arrest, and many were tortured. In recognition for his role in
changing the Chilean economy in favour of the rich, Friedman became
advisor to President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher.

Sweden is now the most
privatized neo-liberal economy of the Scandinavia states. Many of its
public schools are privatized as are child care centers. Sometimes
they go bankrupt and children are left without a school for a time,
and small children have no ready care while both parents hold down
jobs. Nursing centers are privatized, postal service is privatized,
and there are three private train systems with prices varying from
hour to hour.

Sweden’s growth in
inequality between 1985 and the early 2010s is the largest among all
34 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
countries, increasing by one third. But Sweden is still in the group
of most equal OECD countries. Because of neo-liberalism, income
inequality in OECD countries is higher than in 50 years. The average
income of the richest 10% is about nine times that of the poorest 10%
across the OECD, a gap 75% greater than 25 years ago.

Norway’s Labour Party
is a social democratic party. It was the senior partner of the
governing Red-Green Coalition (2005-13). Its former leader, Jens
Stoltenberg, was PM. He relieved Dane Rasmussen as NATO’s secretary
general, October 2014.

Since the 1980s, the
“labour” party has included more of the principles of a social
market economy, privatizing much of government-held assets and
services and reducing income taxes. During the first Stoltenberg
government (2000-1), the party's policies were inspired by Tony
Blair’s right-wing New Labour party. Under right-winger
Stoltenberg, the nation witnessed the most widespread privatization
by any Norwegian government to date, which influenced a majority of
voters to turn his government out, in September 2013 elections.

Ironically, the
Conservatives took over the government in a coalition with the
right-wing libertarian Progress Party (Freskrittpartiet) to
which the xenophobic mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik had been a
member in his youth. The Progress Party’s hero is Ronald Reagan. It
is strongly anti-Muslim and anti-immigration, the motivating factor
for Behring’s shooting murder of 69 Labour Party teenagers, plus
bombing to death eight others and wounding 240 people, on July 22,
2011.

The Progress Party
supports US wars, greater police powers, the EU, and
anti-environmental oil-based economy. However, in order to win enough
votes (16%) to come into government for the first time in its
history, it criticized the allegedly pro-working class government for
“insufficiently funding social welfare and the infrastructure.”

Finland began following
the rest of the West with neo-liberalism deregulations and cutbacks,
in the 1980s, but has not gone as far as the others yet. One of its
hallmarks is education. See Michael Moore’s most recent film
(2016), “Where to invade next”. It is an excellent and
entertaining source for values in which the US is contrasted to
several countries. Finland tops the world for the best education, the
best results for its elementary school students, who also rank among
the happiest. Its secret: no homework, more time to be young, to
play, to relax. Students are motivated to learn in a disciplined way
for the 20 hours they attend classes.

Partanen moved to the
US, in part, for the American land of freedom and opportunity
propaganda. She concluded that those concepts are thriving more in
the Nordic countries than in the U.S. Here is tease from the
interview. “As much as I think that [the policies] Bernie Sanders
[is] advocating are the right ideas, I’m not a big fan of him using
the word “socialist.” Nordic countries are very much capitalist,
free-market societies, and there’s this very strong strain of
individualism in them. The idea that these Nordic countries are these
socialist collectivist countries where everybody thinks of the good
of one another—that’s just not true at all.”

Nevertheless,
Scandinavian poverty rates after taxes and transfers are still among
the lowest in the world. The latest UN figures stood at 5.7% in
Iceland, 6% in Denmark, 7.5% in Finland, 7.7% in Norway, 9.7% in
Sweden, in comparison with 17.4% in the USA (28.3% before taxes).

Yet, surprisingly, all
Nordic nations are on the list of "high inequality" group,
where the top 10% hold 60-70% of the country's household wealth. In
comparison countries that are usually thought to be more capitalist,
like the UK, Canada and Australia are on a rung below in the "medium
inequality" group, with the top 10% holding between 50-60%, as
reported by Mike Bird in Business Insider’s October 14, 2014
article: “Why Socialist Scandinavia Has Some Of The Highest
Inequality In Europe”.

In the US, the top 10%
hold 75% of all wealth, greater than in the days of laissez-faire
capitalism a century ago.

Nordic
governments-institutions remain among the least corrupt, ranking in
the least 12 corrupt of 176 countries evaluated in 2014.
Nevertheless, the Panama Papers reveal massive tax shelter corruption
by some Danish banks, and scores of civil servants were arrested in
June for taking bribes, something unheard of in decades.

Public spending,
especially for health care and education, by the Nordic countries is
still greater compared with other developed countries, although
cutbacks have been severe since the 1980s.

While all Nordic
countries cover all residents, the US spends far more for health care
and yet tens of millions of people are not covered by any health
insurance, nor is care as good across the board as in the Nordic
countries. (2)

Warring for neo-liberalism and the US

Since 1814, Sweden has
maintained a policy of peace and neutrality in not taking sides in
wars albeit with varying degrees of consistency. But with the US’s
“war on terrorism”, Sweden clearly has sought to adhere to
drugstore cowboy George Bush’s challenge: "Every nation, in
every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or
you are with the terrorists."

Sweden’s first
governmental aid “against terrorism” was to help CIA agents by
kidnapping two Egyptian citizens who were seeking asylum in Sweden.
This was one of the most scandalous cases of the “extraordinary
rendition” torture program initiated by Ronald Reagan and used by
the Bush regime several hundred times, involving 54 countries. (3)

Muhammad al-Zery and
Ahmed Agiza were arrested by Swedish police in December 2001. They
were taken to Bromma airport in Stockholm, had their clothes cut from
their bodies, suppositories were inserted in their anuses and they
were put in diapers, overalls, hoods, hand and ankle cuffs. They were
then put onto a Gulfstream 5 aircraft, American registration N379P,
with a crew of masked men. They were flown to Egypt, where they were
imprisoned, beaten, and tortured, according to Swedish TV
investigative programme Kalla fakta, May 2004
(http://web.archive.org/web/20040626072849/http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/17/sweden8620.htm

The Swedish ambassador
in Egypt waited six weeks to visit them. Agiza had been sentenced in
absentia for being an Islamic militant. His 25-year sentence was
reduced to15 years. Al-Zery wasn't charged, and after two years in
jail without ever seeing a judge or prosecutor he was sent to his
village in Egypt. In 2008, AL Zery was awarded $500,000 in damages by
the Swedish government for the wrongful treatment he received in
Sweden and the subsequent torture in Egypt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition

Like most Western
governments, Sweden’s social democrat and liberal governments
participated in warring against Afghanistan and Libya. Sweden lost
five soldiers in Afghanistan. It currently participates with around
500 troops in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
under NATO command. The “neutral” country sent eight jet fighters
to patrol the no-fly zone over Libya, the only country neither a
member of NATO or the Arab League to do so in this one-sided war.

Although Social
Democrat Prime Minister Göran Persson expressed the official
position on the US invasion of Iraq as "unfortunate,"
the nation’s military intelligence agency (MUST) gave crucial
information to the US for a bombing raid on civilian shelters in the
run-up to the 2003 invasion, a Swedish newspaper exposed.
www.thelocal.se/20120903/42972

The day after the war
began, PM Persson said: "Unlike the United States, Sweden
views a military attack on Iraq without the support of the UN
Security Council as a breach of human rights."

The month before,
Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, a Liberal People’s Party politician,
had issued his report to the UN as head of the monitoring,
verification and inspection commission. After 700 inspections, Blix
could report that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD),
which was the key lie used to war against Iraq. The fact that it is
the US which is the world’s greatest producer, seller, and user of
WMD was irrelevant.

A mild mannered man,
Blix accused Bush and Blair of dramatizing the threat that Saddam
Hussein possessed WMD in order to carry out a war they had long
planned, as he wrote in his 2004 book, “Disarming Iraq”.

The Washington Post
reported on April 19, 2002, that senior U.S. officials ordered the
CIA to investigate Blix, in order to gather "sufficient
ammunition to undermine" him so that the US could start the
invasion of Iraq. US officials were upset that the CIA did not
uncover such information.

Blix said he suspected
his home and office were bugged by the United States, while he led
teams searching for Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass
destruction.

By 2010, Sweden had
capitulated more to US’s foreign policy. By then, Wikileaks and its
founder Julian Assange had become one of the US government’s
greatest and most effective “enemies” by having exposed its wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq with the release of new secret information.

The same year, the S.D.
Minister of Justice Tomas Bodström acted to please his great ally by
encouraging Assange’s “rape victims” to file a police
complaint. Bodström is a senior partner in the law firm which came
to represent Anna Arden, and her co-conspirator Sophia Wilen.
Bodström’s “aid” came several days after Arden had tweetered
friends exclaiming excitement about the “rapist” with whom she
just had had sex.

Later, when liberal
Carl Bildt was minister of foreign affairs (2006-14), he refused to
guarantee Assange that he would not be extradited to the US if
Assange appeared in Sweden for police questioning in the case.

Except for Denmark, no
other Nordic country participated directly in the war against Iraq
but in 2015 Norway transferred 120 troops from its war in Afghanistan
to train Iraqi and Kurdish fighters. Sweden began sending a like
number from June 2016 for the same reason.

Norway sent soldiers to
Bosnia (1992-5) and Kosovo (1998-9). It has been an active US-UK
coalition warrior since the beginning of the invasion against
Afghanistan and can claim 10 soldier deaths as proof of its
commitment to the terror war.

Norway has been an
enthusiastic ally in NATO since its beginning (1949). Sixty-six
percent of its people currently support membership. The formerly
peaceful country is now in the front-line for US nuclear strategy,
and a spying central in the Artic. Norwegian fighter aircraft (along
with Danish fighters) bombed the most targets in Libya in proportion
to the number of planes involved.

Most Swedes and Finns
do not want in. Only 27% of Finns support joining NATO. The majority
of Swedes have been opposed. Only 17% were for NATO in 2012. Today it
is nip and tuck.

Finland’s foreign
policy story is different from others but it too is changing thanks
to neo-liberalism and globalization. At the end of WW11, Finland
rejected Marshall Aid, in deference to Soviet desires. The Soviet
Union invaded Finland during the Second World War, hoping to prevent
a Nazi German advance from the neighboring country. Finland was not
occupied by Russians and declared neutrality in 1945. Nevertheless,
the US clandestinely aided the social democratic party financially.

Finland’s military is
geared for defense only, although troops have served in UN
peacekeeping operations in areas where the US-NATO have led
invasions. It has sent hundreds of soldiers to Kosovo, and it lost
two soldiers in Afghanistan on ISAF missions.

Notes:

(1) Possible
motivations to assassinate Olof Palme bring forth memories of the
political assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Millions
believe, me included, that the JFK murder was planned and executed by
CIA officials with Mafia and Cuban exile accomplices. There is loads
of evidence and first hand testimonies to the effect. This includes
Senate and House of Representative investigations, and the great
Oliver Stone film “JFK” based on actual evidence. I suggest just
one of hundreds of books to read: “Double Cross” written by Sam
and Chuck Giancana as told to them by their relative, Chicago Mafia
boss Sam Giancana, who admits to being an integral part of the
assassination and names names. (Warner Books, New York, 1992)

(2) The statistics for
public spending are from the 2014 “index of economic freedom”,
taken by the Wall Street Times and the Heritage Foundation, and
approximate OECD figures. Health and education statistics are those
of OECD. It is interesting to compare tax revenues with public
spending. US public opinion makers who think of Nordic social
democracy as some sort of evil socialism often complain that the US
spends too much money on the public. While the US does spend quite a
bit of its gross domestic product on the public, its operations are
mostly in the hands of private companies, which make profits and
often provide poor services, and can go bankrupt. Social service care
in the Nordic countries was also entirely publicly administered,
although some is now in private hands and there is a decline in
expenditures and service.

Denmark has the highest
taxes (48%, ranging from 38 to 56%), Sweden (44.5), Finland (43.4),
Norway (43.2), Iceland (36). The US collects 25.1% of the GDP in
taxes.

(3) Some Western and
former Eastern European allies have aided the CIA in “torture by
proxy”, which is a “crime against humanity” as so judged by the
UN. Denmark assisted by allowing CIA-managed aircraft to fly over its
territory. Poland was condemned by the European Court of Human
Rights, in 2014, and ordered to pay restitution to the men involved.
US enemies Assad and Hussein allowed US victims to be tortured by
their torturers in the beginning of the war against Afghanistan.

“Whenever I speak as
head of state, I speak about peace. I will say it as often and as
long as necessary,” the straight-talking President Vigdis
Finnbogadöttir told me.

It was the winter of
1980, shortly after she won the presidency, the first female in the
world to win a democratic presidential election.

“Think what we could
do with the money that goes into militarism! I am a premeditated
pacifist. Wars and armies are absurd things. We have no army, no
militarism. We are a peaceful, independent people,” asserted the
charismatic president.

Vigdis Finnbogadöttir

Iceland had achieved
its independence from Denmark during WWII after 600 years of
colonialism. This could occur basically on the condition that the
United States could have the coast guard station at Keflavik as a
military base. In 1949, Iceland joined NATO on Iceland’s condition
that it wouldn’t have a standing army. Throughout the 1960s-70s,
Vigdis, as she prefers to be called, demonstrated against US military
presence, often marching the 50 kilometers to and from the capital
Reykjavik and the base.